Israel draws fire with night attack

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Wednesday that Israel would withdraw troops from some West Bank cities and had released millions of dollars in frozen tax money in concessions to Palestinians after stinging criticism of an airstrike that killed 14 civilians as well as a Hamas leader.\nThe gesture came as Israeli officials defended the bombing and dismissed reports that a cease-fire declaration had just been signed by militant groups before the attack. However, those officials also acknowledged military intelligence that led to Israel's raid was flawed.\nThe army said it would investigate.\n"It's quite clear that those (assessments) are not as accurate or as fail-safe as we would like and clearly there are going to be lessons that have to be learned from this operation," said Daniel Taub, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.\nNine of the dead from the pre-dawn raid on Gaza City were children, including one two-month old baby who was borne aloft by angry mourners Tuesday in a funeral procession that brought out tens of thousands of Palestinians to the dusty streets of Gaza.\nOn Wednesday, Palestinians pulled the bodies of three children from the rubble. Palestinians said the names of the children were on the list of dead from Tuesday, and relatives thought their bodies could not be recovered.\nThe militant group Hamas vowed revenge for the killing of Salah Shehadeh, the leader of Hamas' military wing who Israel says was responsible for dozens of attacks in the past 22 months of fighting.\nPrime Minister Ariel Sharon called the killing "one of our biggest successes." Israeli civilian and military leaders, however, said the loss of civilian life was a grave error.\nIsraeli media largely reflected those views Wednesday. "The assassination and the embarrassment," read the headline in the Maariv daily. Haaretz said the army would investigate what it called the "Gaza bombing disaster."\nYediot Ahronoth quoted Sharon as saying that if he had known that civilians were with Shehadeh, he would have postponed the assassination.\n Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Cabinet, "according to the information which we had there were no civilians near him and we express sorrow for the injuries to them."\n President Moshe Katsav told Army Radio that it appeared the army's intelligence was "not complete" but that responsibility for the "mishap" rested with Israeli politicians.\n Sharon, Ben-Eliezer, Peres and Finance Minister Silvan Shalom met Wednesday morning to discuss resuming talks with the Palestinians and easing the hardships in the Palestinian territories, Israel Army Radio said.\nPalestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian leadership had not decided whether talks could continue after the strike and with Israeli troops holding seven major West Bank towns and cities.\nPeres told reporters after the meeting that the army still intended to withdraw from areas of Hebron and Bethlehem occupied last month, if they remained calm and if the Palestinians assumed control. The army would also consider leaving Ramallah, where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been holed up for much of the last few months, if there was a plan guaranteeing law and order there, he said.